March ii, 1896. J 



Garden and Forest. 



101 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office: Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted by Professor C. S. Sargent. 



ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE POST-OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11, 1896. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Article :— The Plunder of the Adirondack Reservation 101 



Notes of Mexican Travel. — XI. (With figure.) C. G. Pr ingle 102 



Notes on the Names of Yuccas C. S. S. 103 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter W. Watson. 104 



Cultural Department: — The Essentials of a Good La \vn y. Troop. 106 



Orchid Notes Emil Misch. 106 



Begonia Socotrana J. M. Gerard. 107 



Seasonable Greenhouse Notes II'. N. Craig. 107 



Caryopteris mastacanthus, Abutilon Souvenir de Bonn. . ..T. D. Hatfield. igS 



Correspondence : — Decoration of School Grounds Dorcas E. Collins. 108 



John Brown's Grave Francis IV. Lee. 108 



Recent Publications 109 



Notes 110 



Illustration : — Lippia iodantha, n. sp. Rob. & Greenm. ined , Fig. n 105 



The Plunder of the Adirondack Reservation. 



UNDER a resolution of the Assembly of this state, passed 

 on the 3d of May, 1895, a committee of live was 

 appointed to investigate certain alleged depredations on 

 the Adirondack state timber lands. The committee, of 

 which Mr. Howard Payson Wilds was Chairman, and 

 Thomas H. Wagstaff, Secretary, have just made a unani- 

 mous report, based on some fifteen hundred type-written 

 pages of testimony, from which it appears that a great 

 portion of the timber owned by the state has been practi- 

 cally without any protection during five years past, and 

 that any one who chose to do so could cut and sell it 

 without molestation. The sixty-five witnesses examined 

 at different points were lumbermen, contractors, jobbers, 

 sawmill-owners, foresters, farmers and residents of the 

 neighborhood of the state lands, and nearly all of them 

 testified with reluctance. The facts obtained from them, 

 after rigid examination, relate to 125 different lots owned 

 by the state, and embracing altogether more than 35,000 

 acres of land. How much timber has been cut and sold 

 from these lands can only be estimated roughly by the 

 summary of the testimony given in this report, but a glance 

 at the record showing that this lot " was nearly stripped of 

 marketable timber " ; that the next one was " well lumbered 

 over"; that "500 acres were cleaned of everything mar- 

 ketable," and so on, suggests a very large sum total. The 

 reason why it is difficult to obtain testimony was stated 

 by one of the foresters: "They are all neighbors, and 

 they all want to trespass some if they get a chance, and, as 

 a rule, they won't squeal on each other. If a man does, 

 and it is known, they turn him down pretty quick." The 

 loss, then, of an enormous amount of timber, a local public 

 opinion which justifies the pillage of the state lands, and 

 the inadequacy of the machinery provided by the state for 

 protecting its forests are the three facts which stand out 

 prominently in this report. 



It is difficult to say who is the leading criminal in the 

 chain of agents, which extends from the chopper up to the 

 mill-owner. The owners of sawmills and pulp-mills find 



in the Adirondacks a source of cheap lumber, and so long 

 as they want wood somebody will be ready to furnish the 

 logs either from his own private lands or from the public 

 lands adjoining them. The mill-owners buy the logs, after 

 they are cut, of agents who sublet contracts to jobbers, and 

 these to gangs of choppers, so that the contract passes 

 through many hands before it comes to the man who 

 actually does the work. In every case where timber was 

 cut beyond the boundary of private property, and upon the 

 state lands, each witness would transfer the responsibility 

 to the next man in the line, and the final trespasser almost 

 invariably declared that if the boundaries of the state land 

 had been better defined he would never have crossed them. 

 As a matter of fact, in most cases no monuments mark the 

 boundary except an occasional tree blazed many years 

 ago. On most of the land the blazed trees are down or 

 destroyed along most of the lines. Many of the lum- 

 bered lots have been burned over and the old marks are 

 all obliterated. The only accessible descriptive data as to 

 the boundaries of the state lands are those which have 

 been furnished in the lists published by the State Forest 

 Commission, in the local assessment rolls and in the forest 

 map published in 1893. It may be true, therefore, that 

 there have been cases where trespass has been committed 

 from inability to find the state line, but one searches the 

 testimony in vain to find that any precautions to prevent 

 the state lands from being cut over were taken by those 

 who let the job. No surveys are made, no boundaries are 

 pointed out, the men are left to cut where they will, and in 

 case of trespass the responsibility is thrown upon the job- 

 bers, who are men of little properly and willing to take 

 chances. These depredations of timber, then, may occa- 

 sionally be committed by jobbers through ignorance, and 

 more frequently through recklessness ; but they are often 

 committed intentionally and defiantly. 



Now, it is not to be believed that the lumber contractors 

 do not know or understand the general location of the 

 state lands, for whenever they assert some pretended right 

 or color of title to the timber on some of these lands they 

 can find the lines readily enough, and they at once assume 

 the ownership of it and cut and haul it away. As a rule, this 

 cutting and hauling has been a matter of general knowledge, 

 and yet no one has molested contractor or jobber, and hav- 

 ing ventured once to cut timber without trouble or expense 

 they do so again, knowing that the settlement will be easy 

 even if they are detected in the trespass. In general the job- 

 bers cut where the contractors and lumbermen employ 

 them, and they cut without investigation or concern as to 

 whether the land belongs to the state or not. The common 

 workmen are still more indifferent as to the ownership of 

 the land so long as they make a living from their work. 

 All this is done so openly that concealment is impossible — 

 indeed, it is never attempted — and yet it is a fact that 

 seldom, if ever, have trespassers been caught in the act of 

 cutting or hauling timber on state lands by the forester in 

 the discharge of his duties. This officer rarely visits the 

 state lands during the lumbering season, and he waits till 

 the following spring to prosecute his investigations, such 

 as they are. Rarely, indeed, has any careful search been 

 made by a state official to ascertain the extent of trespass, 

 or to identify the trespasser, or to trace the disposition of 

 the timber. The most that has been done is to report the 

 matter to the State Forest Commission with a recommen- 

 dation as to what sum should be charged for the logs in 

 case of settlement. No prosecution has been carried on in 

 any case for trespass, the depredators being always dealt 

 with as innocent trespassers. At least, it does not appear 

 that a single prosecution for the statutory penalty has ever 

 been made in any of the frequent cases of trespass shown 

 in this investigation, although thousands of trees have been 

 cut for which the penalty should have been enforced. 

 Logs have sometimes been seized and sold tor what was 

 offered, or they have been left to lie where they were found, 

 because no one in the neighborhood of the land or of the 

 lumberman was willing' to bid against the trespasser. 



